What I learned from the Dalai Lama's Cat

November 9, 2016Meredith Blis

So last weekend this interesting book called, The Dalai Lama’s Cat (David Michie), came up on my Kindle. And it has been amazing! The narrator is a Himalayan feline whom the Dalai Lama rescues from dire circumstances.

The story is adorably told from her feline perspective as she observes the monks, his holiness, the famous people who visit him and other colorful people in the village.

This book is an incredible and easy dive into Buddhist wisdom. And it shares a lot of messages that I think can help us to cultivate peace within ourselves and in our world.

As you know, I’ve been writing a lot lately on the idea of Be Your Own Kind of Beautiful. And while I was reading on Sunday, I had a huge a-ha. Oh My!

I think I’ve been missing a piece of the puzzle

The core of our beautiful can be magnified by the beautiful we give to others.

Let me explain this from a feline perspective. The cat observes a very famous, wealthy and successful ‘self’ development guru who comes to see His Holiness because he is struggling with a deep sense of both dissatisfaction and unhappiness. There is a longer answer in the book, but to sum up, the Dalai Lama says this

“Two main true causes of happiness: first, the wish to give happiness to others, which Buddhists define as love, and second, the wish to help free others from dissatisfaction or suffering, which we define as compassion.”

“The main shift, you see, is from placing self at the center of our thoughts to putting others there. It is – what do you say? – a paradox that the more we focus our thoughts on the well-being of others, the happier we become. The first one to benefit is oneself. I call this being wisely selfish”

Down the page the visiting famous guru says

“Self-Development takes us only so far. Then there needs to be Other Development”

The ‘Guru’ then goes on to pass his Self-Development empire onto his business associates and begins another division focused on Other Development. Thus his joy returns… (note I have only excerpted a piece of this tale….)

Simply put,

“The best way to achieve happiness for oneself is to give happiness to others”

It dawned on me, in all my beautiful talk, I forgot to mention. Perhaps the core of our beautiful lies in the beautiful we give to others.

That being said, we also must remember our boundaries - there is a difference between giving what we can, and bleeding out constantly to things that drain us.

This process doesn’t have to be a complicated venture! It can be a kind word, a smile, or having compassion for someone else's circumstances

Another piece of this idea is to be aware when we have moments wherein we become so Self focused that we start to drain our own spark!